She’s the Twentieth Century Fox that Doors singer Jim Morrison sang about.
And now Pamela Courson has inspired a new book about the famous, and infamous, people buried in Orange County.
It was Pamela who led Anaheim Hills man Michael Barry to spend a year of his life tracking down the graves of everyone from the voice of Tony the Tiger to the director of photography for “The Blair Witch Project,” from the guy who wrote “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” to the woman who played Morticia on “The Addams Family.”
Now keep in mind that Pam died in 1974. But she was there one day in the spring of 2008 on the pages of a book Barry was reading at a Santa Barbara bookstore. Barry and his wife, Christyn, had driven to the coastal town for a weekend getaway and found themselves killing time in a Barnes & Noble.
A big Doors fan who has long lamented that he was too young to experience the ’60s himself, Barry, 46, was thumbing through a Jim Morrison bio when he saw that the rock legend’s girlfriend grew up in Orange and was buried there after she overdosed on heroin on a friend’s couch at age 27.
When he returned from the weekend, Barry went to findagrave.com and learned that Pamela was buried at Fairhaven cemetery in Santa Ana. He drove over and found her ashes in a wall near the Court of Meditation, freshly decorated with flowers, poetry and pictures of Pam and Jim.
A few days later Barry was at a Borders in Anaheim Hills, this time thumbing through the book “Ghosts of Orange County,” when a small laminated flier fell out onto the floor.
On it was a picture of a skull and a question: Ready to write a book?
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The flier was from Schiffer Publishing and it said it was seeking people to pen ghost stories.
Barry didn’t have a ghost story. Or did he?
Driving home, he mused that maybe he should write a book about famous people buried in Orange County. “But why would they take an idea of mine?” he asked himself. “I’ve never written a book before.”
He never even had anything published, unless you counted the paper he wrote on the coalfields of Great Britain while he was a senior at Cal State Fullerton. That’s where Barry had gotten his degrees in criminal justice and history after moving here from Chicago in ’86. Since then he has worked as a juvenile probation counselor and a loss prevention manager.
But at the moment that the flier fell out of the book, he was unemployed. By choice. He had inherited enough money to live comfortably for the time being, which meant he had time on his hands.
Barry sent off a pitch to Schiffer. A few days later he got a reply. While Schiffer typically publishes books about ghosts, the e-mail said, a book about graves was close enough. Write the book on spec and they would print it, they told him. He could collect on royalties.
And so his hunt began. It was a long slog; a year and a half of sleuthing that mostly took place on the top floor of Cal State Fullerton’s library. There, squinting at microfilm, Barry pored over yellowed newspaper headlines and obituaries. With the information he culled, he headed into the graveyards, 24 in all.
At Pacific View Memorial Park in Newport Beach alone he found 48 pages worth of famous graves.
It’s pretty well known that John Wayne is buried there, under a headstone with an engraving of a cowboy on a horse in red rock country.
But if you go pay your respects, you can also stop by the grave of Jeanne Carmen, the 1950s pinup girl who earned the nickname “Queen of the B-Movies.” The words “She came, She saw, She conquered” are etched on her crypt along with a sexpot picture of the platinum blond bombshell.
Buried in the Lido Terrace is Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield. “If you believe in forever, then life is just a one-night stand,” reads his epitaph.
Down the slope from the Newport Vista lawn is the marble memorial bench of chocolate candy store queen Helen Grace.
Buried in the Garden of David lawn after overdosing on cocaine in 2007 is Kevin Dubrow, lead singer of the heavy metal band Quiet Riot.
And buried on the Seaview Lawn is fad toy king Arthur “Spud” Melin, who gave us the Frisbee and Hula Hoop before dying in 2002 of Alzheimer’s.
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If you go into the Magnolia Court Crypts, you will find Frieda Pushnik, who was born with no arms or legs and is immortalized in “Side Show,” the campy horror classic with a cult following.
Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress also has some interesting residents.
Sandy West, the drummer for the all-girl punk rock band The Runaways (about which a movie is being made) was buried in the Garden of Protection after dying of lung cancer at 47.
Buried in the Tender Promises lawn is rock ‘n’ roll Hall of Famer Eddie Cochran, who died in ’60 when his taxi slammed into a telephone pole.
Pop singer Karen Carpenter‘s crypt in the Sanctuary of Compassion now sits empty after her brother moved her remains to Westlake Village in 2003, 20 years after she lost her battle with anorexia nervosa.
At El Toro Memorial Park, Barry found flashy Olympic track star Flo-Jo, who died in ’98, buried near the rose garden under a headstone with a huge picture of her looking beautiful.
At Westminster Memorial Park, it’s actually hard to miss the grave of Bradley Nowell, the lead singer of the alternative rock band Sublime. He died in ’96 of a heroin overdose, but fans continue to spray paint messages on the curbs and trees around his grave.
It’s the complete opposite at Loma Vista Memorial Park in Fullerton where you wouldn’t know it if you tripped on the simple gravestone of novelist C.S. Forester, who wrote the Horatio Hornblower series.
In the Ascension Cemetery in Lake Forest, Barry found William Hanna, co-creator of countless cartoons, including those featuring Tom and Jerry and the Flintstones. Coincidentally, the voice of Wilma Flintstone, Jean Vander Pyl, is also buried at Ascension. Pictures of her and Wilma are etched on her stone.
A few months ago, Schiffer sent Barry a copy of his new book, “Final Resting Places, Orange County’s Dead and Famous,” along with a bottle of Merlot.
“I didn’t do this for the money,” Barry says. “It was very rewarding.”
Barry has a book signing Feb. 5 at Barnes & Noble across from MainPlace. His book is available at bookstores or at michaelthomasbarry.com.
